All tagged United Nations

In a great irony, the COVID-19 pandemic might be a harbinger of peaceful times for Yemen. After more than 5 years of war and a severe humanitarian crisis, multiple ceasefire declarations by the Saudi-led coalition, plummeting oil prices, and a significant redirection of funds towards the domestic healthcare sector might finally convince the warring parties to agree to a durable peace accord.

While UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ call for a global ceasefire on March 23rd was met with encouraging responses from many state and non-state actors, its effects on the ground are complex and difficult to predict. To gather insight on the potential effects of COVID-19 on the prospects for renewed peace efforts, Daniel Odin Shaw interviews Dr. Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, a Research Director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

Amidst an already-tangled web of governance and security problems, the 2017 merger of four terrorist groups presents an ever-growing threat to French, UN, and local forces in Mali, who have struggled since 2013 to extinguish the fire of militant insurgency in the north. Despite considerable foreign military intervention, Mali’s terrorist threat is expanding and its humanitarian crisis grows more desperate every day.